Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Hexaware Technologies Limited's earnings conference call for the Q3 earnings call. We'll begin today's session with a presentation from the Hexaware management team, followed by a Q&A segment. To ask a question during Q&A, please use the raise hand feature located at the bottom of your Zoom interface. This will place you in the virtual queue. I'll now hand the conference over to Mr. Neeraj Khemka, Head Investor Relations. Thank you. Over to you, Mr. Neeraj.
Thank you. Hello everyone, and welcome to Hexaware Technologies' Q3 CY25 earnings call. In the call today, we have with us Mr. R. Srikrishna, CEO, and Mr. Vikash Jain, CFO. In the course of this call, we may make certain statements which are forward-looking and may involve a number of risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements made herein are based on information presently available to the management, and the company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made in the course of this call. In this regard, there is a full disclosure which has been included in the investor presentation and the press release. We consider that as read. With this, I'll hand over the call to Keech.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. If you could go to the slides from now, please. Yes, thank you. Last quarter, we said our business model has shifted right by one to two quarters. What it meant is two things. It meant that deals had slowed down in closure. We expect that to pick up. The second thing is that no matter what deals close, it would have limited impact on our Q3 or limited to no impact on our Q3 and Q4 revenues. That thesis actually is playing out quite nicely, so we will talk about deals later, but deal momentum has picked up, but it does not have an impact on our current quarter revenue or unlikely to have an impact on our Q4 revenue either.
Our revenues were roughly in line with what we had expected, what we had said likely we will do, up at 3.3% quarter-to-quarter on US dollar basis. Our profitability actually improved a little bit, which is normal for Q3. It puts us in line with what we had said from the beginning of the year that we will deliver a 17.1% to 17.4% reported EBITDA margin. So YTD is about 17.2%. So we are in line to deliver that. Our cash, as always, is very strong. This is a $228 million closing balance after paying for the SMC Squared acquisition. There were several critical leadership updates during the quarter. Shantanu Barua joined us as the head of H&I vertical. He joined us from HCLTech, where for the past decade he grew their healthcare business from close to zero to $1 billion.
And that's a new opportunity for us to grow. A lot of our presence is in insurance and life sciences, and healthcare actually is a big opportunity area for us to grow. And Shantanu comes with significant expertise there. Just a few days ago, Ravi joined us as the head of high-tech products and platform, a new vertical we created by splitting our high-tech and professional services vertical. This is something we've been speaking about. Ravi comes actually with a mix of big IT services industry experience, but more interestingly, over the last several years in the startup ecosystem in the Bay Area. And we think that mix of skills is very valuable for us as we build out our high-tech business. Our operational metrics are very strong. We continue to add headcount every quarter as we've done for a number of quarters. Our attrition remains amongst the best.
Our utilization is quite strong. I do want to provide some update on our strategic initiatives. On legacy modernization, we spoke last quarter that we've got kind of two initial paid deals, which was an important marker of progress. I think where we are now is that there are at least three deals that have gone to a point where there are scale transformations. Two of them are RFP situations and one is sole-source. We launched in early Q2 offering on Vibe coding and Vibe Engineering. We had a simple one-line proposition, built applications 10x faster and 3x cheaper, and this is finding widespread acceptance, not just with Hexaware customers, but across the industry as well. I think we've taken a very early lead on widespread training of our workforce and widespread conversations with our customers in Vibe coding. Finally, going on AI, two critical things.
One, Siddharth Dhar, who's built a scale business for us in digital ITO, took over additional mantle as the head of AI practice for us. And in the course of this quarter, we launched multiple domain AI solutions and the contact center transformation. There are at least three solutions that have already found initial orders with customers. We launched one that has agentic AI for parts of a clinical trial process, and we're actually building one for a client already in that area, and some solutions will soon go into production. We launched a solution for an investment analyst agent to help asset managers, and this is a solution that actually we already have again a client for. So a lot of our domain solutions are immediately seeing resonance in the market. If you go to the next slide, please. Just today, we announced another acquisition.
This is a company called CyberSolve. CyberSolve is a specialist in IAM. And some of you who follow this space may know that IAM is a critical growth area within the security ecosystem. Every customer is in the process of either starting their IAM journey or completing it because every single application in every major enterprise has to be onboarded through an IAM platform. While the company is a specialist in IAM, the team that comes with it has broad-based security experience that we think will have value for us in our overall security business. And Mohit, who's the CEO, will actually stay and continue with a larger role in Hexaware. Their modest size, as many of our acquisitions have been, last year, the revenues were in the order of $25 million, and actually their first 18 months revenue was $18.5 million.
This is a source-source deal, so actually we got it at what we think is an attractive valuation of just under $35 million upfront and about $31.5 million based on performance in the future. Go to the next slide, please. I spoke about deal momentum picking up. I will speak now to deals in Q3, and I will come back in the end to speak about what we expect may happen in Q4 and the impact for that on a go-forward basis, so we've won, I'll say, two or three categories of deals this quarter. The first category is of the four consolidation deals that we've been speaking about. We've won one. This is with a large US and Canadian bank. The second one we won was not an enterprise consolidation, but consolidation of a book of work.
This is actually something that came new into the pipeline and closed rapidly within the quarter. And this is for a very large global insurance company headquartered in Germany. Aside from that, we've won a GCC opportunity aided in part by our acquisition of SMC. People understand that we are serious players in this space. That's the one that you see in the top right-hand corner. We've won Digital ITO Outsourcing deals to them, one again with a large insurance company. Actually, in this case, it was a rebid situation. They were not an incumbent. We displaced a tier one incumbent in this case. And another one that is starting off modest, but the customer is in a space that is rapidly growing. And they provide data center infrastructure, and they're growing very fast, and hopefully our business with them will grow as they continue to grow.
We also won product engineering for a global fintech platform company that services a very large number of asset managers and hedge funds. We won a marketing analytics deal. This came from our capability from our prior acquisition of Softcrylic for a large video game streaming platform. And finally, we've been speaking about doing more in Asia. We opened actually our first client in New Zealand for a major bank, and this is tech modernization using Amaze platform. So we are seeing a pickup in deal momentum across categories, smaller deals like the tech modernization enabled by platforms, GCC consolidation deals. So there's outsourcing deals, including renewal situations where we were not the incumbent. With that, I'm going to pause and hand over to Vikash.
Thanks, Keech. We can go to the next slide. Revenue for the quarter came in at $395 million on a sequential basis, a reported number of 3.3%. We did have some headwind coming in from Forex on a sequential basis. Constant currency growth was a tad higher at 3.4%. In INR terms, this represents a year sequential growth of 6.8%. Year on year, the reported number is 5.5%. It obviously includes an impact associated with SMC, the acquisition that we closed in the middle of the quarter. On a pro forma basis, our year on year growth is 4.3%. In INR terms translated, it's a year on year growth of 11.1%. Growth for the quarter was driven by underlying volume growth, and I'll speak to it more when we cover the operational metrics later during the call. SMC that we closed in the quarter.
This quarter, we also had a higher share of license revenue, which was partially offset by the headwinds due to revenue mix change, higher offshore revenue mix in the current quarter versus the prior ones, and marginal headwinds from Forex and BPS. Overall, strong underlying volume growth, SMC, higher license revenues offset by higher offshore mix revenues and headwinds from FX and BPS. On the margin front, reported EBITDA for the quarter at 17.5%. This represents a 30 basis points improvement quarter on quarter. On the back of 50 basis points that we did in the last quarter, year on year, it represents a meaningful expansion of close to 154 basis points. YTD Q3 EBITDA is at 17.2%, which is well within the guided range, what we gave at the beginning of the year of 17.1% to 17.5%. The 30 basis points improvement in the current quarter, there's a few percentages.
First and foremost, the operational items added close to 40 basis points. FX, from a margin perspective, was a tailwind at 110 basis points. And then there were two headwinds. Both of them actually specific to the current quarter. License revenues, which came in higher in the current quarter, had a headwind of close to 70 basis points. And in the current quarter, we also saw some medical expenses in the US go up and a higher travel of close to 50 basis points. Move to the next one. Some color on the unit level performance. In the current quarter, four verticals, namely the financial services, healthcare and insurance, manufacturing and consumer, and travel and transportation, delivered both sequential and year on year growth. Sequential growth for the quarter was led by M&C and H&I. Financial services, business continues to be strong.
If you see the current year, BFS posted sequential and year on year growth every single quarter and is expected to be the fastest growing vertical for us by the end of the year. And this is despite the fact that we had a meaningful headwind from one of the large clients driven by the budget cuts at Q1 end. H&I delivered double-digit sequential growth this quarter. Some of this growth would be unsustainable next quarter because of one-time license revenues what we had. However, we'll still deliver a strong year on year growth next quarter. M&C has the fastest sequential growth this quarter, which was a combination of both organic business and SMC. On the organic side, we are seeing that the decline what we had in the vertical has bottomed out, and we see the growth coming back.
There are green shoots both in terms of existing account and the pipeline that's building in terms of new logos. HTPS has a sequential decline both a sequential and year on year decline driven by some of the project closures. We do see a massive opportunity for our growth in the high-tech space because that's one space where we think we have a significant amount of headroom to grow. Srikrishna just spoke about the fact that we are really excited about Eravi joining us to lead the high-tech vertical. Banking, as we had called out in the prior calls, is seeing a sharp recovery driven by both new deals in existing and new logos. Banking delivered a strong sequential growth this quarter on the back of a solid quarter that we had in Q2. We'll see the growth trajectory continue even from a future quarter perspective.
Travel and transportation, the sequential decline is driven more by project closures. So there are some puts and takes within the quarter as to how the project starts and closes. It's going to be one of the, in fact, from a full year perspective, GTT is going to deliver better than the overall company growth. From a geo perspective, Q2 in a row that all three geos actually have delivered sequential growth. From a full year perspective, we expect North America to outperform the company growth, while followed by Europe. We do have some bit of a catch-up to be done as far as Asia Pacific is concerned. On the IT and BPS, similar to the last quarter, we see that the growth rate in IT is far accelerating compared to what the BPS growth rates are. Move to the next one.
We continue to add meaningful clients to our client base, and that's also reflected in terms of the greater than $50 million accounts. It's a specific call out that on an LTM basis, the number of $50 million accounts what we have has gone from three to four on a like-to-like basis. Next. This is the chart which actually explains all the operational improvements what we are doing and which is actually aiding in terms of our margin expansion that I spoke about at 154 basis points on a year on year basis and the 30 basis points that we had on a sequential basis. Starting with our offshore revenue, our offshore revenue now is at close to 49%. That's a 220 basis points improvement sequentially and a 520 basis points improvement on a year on year basis.
Of the 220 basis points improvement that we had sequentially, close to half of that came from SMC. SMC being in the GCC space is completely offshore-centric. So that is aiding. But outside of SMC too, we continue to make significant progress in terms of improving our offshore mix. Headcount for the quarter, we added close to 1,180 people, 750 out of that in IT and 430 in BPS. The 750 that we added in IT had close to 250 coming in from SMC. So excluding SMC, the IT headcount addition, net addition was close to 500 people, and this is the ninth straight quarter of headcount addition.
Now, if you see the headcount addition and take into consideration how the utilization is faring, which is 10 basis points improvement and has been at the range of more than 83% or 83.5% for the last few quarters, you would see that's actually driving the underlying volume growth. So the headcount additions with the high utilization numbers. And added to that, we have one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry. So we continue to be comfortable at the attrition rates that we have, which is trending around 11% to 11.5% for the last few quarters. Next. We continue to maintain one of the lowest DSO in the industry, which is at 73 days and have a very strong cash conversion. Our closing cash balance is at $228 million after paying for the SMC acquisition of close to $45 million. Our OCF to EBITDA on an LTM basis is 80%.
This is significantly better than the range what we had guided at the beginning of the year of close to 70%. Our ETR on an YTD basis is close to 23.5%. What we had guided to from an ETR perspective of close to 24%, I think from a full year perspective that ETR is going to be tad below at close to 23.7% because we have been able to manage that better than what we had estimated at the beginning of the year. With that, I'll pass it back to Keech.
Thank you, Vikash. Should go back to the next slide. Go to the next slide, please. Okay. On overall outlook, we think the demand environment has stabilized. You know, variety of kind of factors which we're all aware of that have been impacting it through the course of the year. But I will say right now there is a sense of stability leading to improvement, including in M&C. You heard that from Vikash. You know, that's the single sector that has pulled us down quite a bit in this year, and we're seeing signs of recovery. In M&C, we actually had a solid positive growth quarter on quarter in M&C.
Deals. I already said we won two consolidation deals, one which is something that's been running through the year, other which is not an enterprise consolidation, but a consolidation of a significant book of work that actually just came in and was won in the quarter itself. And there's actually continued good progress on two others. And there's one which we said, hey, the phase I got complete and we have a role to play in that. And phase II, we're not sure will pick up anytime soon. Now, we do expect actually more deals to be decided in Q4 with actually quite a few deals well advanced in Q4. There are many where customers have stated intentions of starting a transition in January or getting into a new strategic vendor program from January in the consolidation opportunities.
There's quite a number of them that have picked up speed in the last quarter or so and will decide in Q4. Our overall pipeline actually is the largest ever. Okay. It's actually in excess of $3 billion. But I'm going to say it's got to the size in part because it's got bloated. In Q2 and maybe a later part of Q1, there were not many decisions. Neither was it going out with a win or a loss. So we actually expect our pipeline size will reduce a bit in Q4, but actually in a good way because decisions will happen. Our legacy modernization deals are growing. I've said this is worthwhile reiterating that we now have three deals that involve full-scale modernization of material size. Two of them are RFP-based and one is a sole-source deal.
Vikash gave quite a bit of commentary about, sorry, actually before I go into the vertical view, so what does kind of this mean for future, you know, it will not have an impact on Q4. And we said this last quarter itself. So these deals, as positive as the momentum is, will not have an impact on Q4. So Q4 will continue to have our regular headwinds of furloughs and calendar. In addition, we have a short-term headwind due to the government shutdown. And I want to clarify this is not as it relates to the H-1B fees. Okay. A minute on that. We have been reducing our dependence on new H-1Bs consistently over the last four or five years. And as a matter of fact, in this year, much before the new policy was announced, we had applied for zero new H-1Bs.
It was not part of our talent strategy to get new H-1Bs. This is actually not to do with that. What is happening is that we currently can't enable visa transfers. The impact for that impact is that growth in some accounts and some aspects of some accounts which are on site is restricted because of visa transfers. That's not the only pool that we hired from, but it is a chunk or in some cases a good chunk of the pool people who have visas with other organizations that we need to transfer. Right now, there are no transfers happening. This is not unique to Hexaware. Nobody in the world can get visa transfers right now. Reiteration on vertical FS will lead growth for the year followed by travel and then followed by H&I.
Banking will lead Q1Q growth and eventually will lead full Y and Y growth. If you recall, it started with a big call, big negative in quarter one, but since then it's been on a tear. HTPS, there's some commentary. Why is it that we are seeing kind of a drop? There are two things there. One, you know, this one of the customers we won a consolidation deal earlier in the quarter. So that ramp-up is going on, but it's actually stopped kind of growing in Q3, which actually is the customer's quarter one, and there's actually a budget cut, a significant budget cut in quarter one. Some of it is expected. The extent was not. Nevertheless, we were still, what it meant is that our growth got curtailed. There's another client which had a very significant budget cut.
So this, I think choppiness will continue one to two quarters, but it'll resume growth. The long-term outlook or even the medium-term outlook for this sector continues to be very strong. Not in Q4, but from Q1 onwards, we will separate reporting for high-tech and professional services. And we expect that over the next few years, high-tech will have rapid growth. And Vikash already said M&C has good solid early signs of recovery. Margin, we have narrowing the outlook from 17.1% to 17.4% to 17.1% to 17.2% for the full year. Now, last comment before we turn it over for questions. Now, what does all this mean for FY26, calendar 26? Will definitely be better than the current year. Okay. How much better? I think we will provide color when we come back a quarter from now. We are in a budget cycle.
We are having conversations with multiple customers, getting a better understanding of the budgets for next year, and also, like I said, there's quite a number of deals that are in the final stage, and a combination of that will tell us how much better we will be next year, and we'll provide color on that when we come back. With that, I will pause and open for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer segment. To ask a question, please click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your Zoom interface to enter the queue. Once announced, kindly unmute yourself, state your name and organization, and proceed with your question. If your query is addressed before your turn, you may press the lower hand button to exit the queue. We'll pause briefly to allow the team to assemble the list of participants.
It can be a while. Could you stop sharing the presentation screen?
Our first question will come from Pratik Maheshwari with HSBC Securities.
Hi Keech. Hi Vikash. Thank you for the opportunity. Firstly, I just wanted to check again on your vertical-wise growth. So you said there's some contribution from SMC in your manufacturing vertical. The health and insurance also grew very strongly this quarter. So just wanted to understand if there is anything and what's driving the growth.
You know, on M&C, I think even if you exclude the contribution from SMC, it would have still grown quarter on quarter, which is actually a very positive sign for us because that's really been the one that's pulling us down. It'll take a few quarters of quarter on quarter growth for us to get back to full year growth. But I think we have begun that journey in M&C. On H&I, I mean, we were operating without a leader for a quarter. So Shantanu is awesome. So I feel very good about our long-term prospects in H&I.
Okay. And the other one was Keech on your acquisition of CyberSolve. So while I am, I think it's a good opportunity and you mentioned that the growth rate will be about 15%, right? So I just wanted to understand. So the company has grown, the growth or revenue has been stagnant for in the recent years. So with Hexaware, what kind of growth will it be for that business? And also if you could share the margins of that business.
See, on growth, I mean, it is a project-based business, okay? So in itself, they're a specialist firm in that. So the work that we do in CyberSolve is to onboard customers onto IAM platforms. And actually, we have a platform that automates and reduces cycle time quite a bit for onboarding new applications onto the IAM platform. But it's a project business, okay? What I think for us it means is two things. One, we have quite a number of clients who are in this IAM journey. In fact, even right now, for a while before we bought this, we've been partnering with some firms and subcontracting work. So the demand from our existing customers is a known pocket of demand, okay? The second thing is that the team actually comes with a much broader set of capabilities, okay?
Combined with that, we think we can do more than the project work. It actually gives us a really good base of trust and seat at the table with the clients from where we can expand. That'll improve growth. On margins, Vikash?
Thanks. So from the margins perspective, at an EBITDA level, the margins are largely comparable and the same zip code as what we have on the organic side of the business. However, from an EPS perspective, initially it is going to be marginally diluted. That's because of the acquisition accounting. We have to take the amortization of intangibles into the P&L. But quickly, it is going to be EPS accretive this fall.
Okay. And last question is on your basically high-tech and professional service. So basically, I just wanted to understand. So you were saying that there was a consolidation opportunity and then there's some budget cut, right? And so just wanted to understand if there has been basically your work would get delayed or there is a cut to your work as well.
There are two different traps, okay? One where we won a consolidation deal earlier in the year, okay? And we've been gaining substantial market share in that client and we're growing, okay? The growth kind of plateaued for Q3 because while we were consolidating, there was a budget cut, okay? Which coincided with the beginning of their fiscal year, which is our quarter three. But you know that in some ways, the bottom is already there, okay, for that customer. It didn't degrow, it just was muted growth or flattish for the quarter. We already kind of at the bottom there and we will continue to grow from this point. The original kind of premise of consolidation, gaining market share remains very much intact.
There was another client who had a significant budget cut, which I think kind of the big impact for us was in Q3 that just passed. There'll be a smaller impact in Q4. And by the way, much of this was known to us largely. And actually, Q4 will kind of bottom out for that client as well. That's why I said in aggregate, there'll be choppiness for one to two quarters. One has already passed, one more ahead of us, but after that, there will be growth in this particular segment.
Okay. Thanks, Keech. Thanks, Vikash. Those were my questions. Thank you so much.
I think I'd just like to add one thing. You had a question with respect to the growth on CyberSolve, which Srikrishna addressed. The other aspect associated with it is it should look like a valuation. The assets in this space generally trade at valuations, which from a multiple of the revenues are pretty high. From a valuation perspective, the EV of this asset on a revenue-based last year, they did close to $26 million, is $66 million with an upfront payout of $35 million, and the balance $31 million is linked to next three years of performance.
So it's a judicious use from a capital perspective where acquiring the right capabilities with the very strong management team and good set of logos, but the payouts are all linked to future performance, which obviously are meaningful targets in terms of the growth that we have agreed with the management, which is coming in. So it's the capability acquisition, what's happening from a revenue perspective, what we think can happen from a future perspective, but at the right valuation, which is very important to understand.
Thanks, Vikash. All the best.
Our next question will come from Manik Taneja with Axis Capital.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. First one is with regards to some of the near-term challenges that you've highlighted in your professional services customer base. Do you think that becomes an impediment to overall growth in calendar year 2026, especially given you also mentioned that you would expect CY 2026 to be better versus CY 2025? That's question number one. The second question was with regards to our segmental margin performance. If you could help us understand the percentages with regards to some of those movements, especially in verticals wherein you have started to pick up growth like banking. And even from a professional services standpoint, do you think some of these pressure leads to some pressure on margins? Those would be my questions. Thank you.
The short answer to your first question, will BS be a headwind for growth in 2026? The answer is no. What about re-educating of the two clients? One of them, I think the bottom is already behind us in Q3. And the other one, there was one part, actually the bigger part of the headwind was in Q3, a smaller part will be in Q4. Both of these were largely known and will be behind us when we finish Q4. So it will not be a headwind for us in 2026. In fact, it will be a growth driver for us in 2026. On segmental margins, at the highest level, there isn't a material difference that is worthwhile kind of looking at in any level of detail, but I don't know, Vikash, do you want to add some color to that?
Yeah. So from a segmental margin perspective, if you look at the two big items in terms of the quarter-on-quarter movements were in two areas. One was in H&I, the other was in M&C. H&I, as I gave the commentary while giving the performance update for the quarter, that some of this growth will taper down from a next quarter perspective. That's primarily because the license revenues, what we had a jump in the current quarter, a material portion of that was in H&I as a vertical. Similarly, the M&C, I did call out that M&C, the underlying business from an organic basis grew. And at the same point of time, it was helped on the count of SMC. SMC being 100% offshore-centric business comes in with a margin profile which is better than a mix of both onsite and offshore.
So that helped us in terms of improving the margins.
Yeah. If you could just help us understand any seasonality around both SMC and the cybersecurity acquisition that you announced today?
Guys, I mean, when you speak about the seasonality, if you look into our business, the key seasonality is associated with calendar, where Q4 is seasonally a weak quarter on account of calendars and furloughs, and then Q2 and Q3 are the strongest in terms of the calendars. I think that's the similar seasonality what we have in this business. Nothing outside of that.
Great. Thank you and all the best.
Our next question will come from Abhishek Pathak with MOSL.
Hi, Dean. Am I audible? Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Dean, my question was pertaining to the range of outcomes that we expect in CY26 with regards to the four large deals that we've been talking about. I understand one of those deals has been closed. So trying to understand sort of with and without those deal closures, how do you sort of think about CY26 going forward, right? I mean, if they close and they don't end up closing, what's the range of growth outcomes we are kind of looking at? Thank you.
I'll say two things, okay? One is that a lot of our incremental growth will not just be dependent on the large deals, right? The two kind of that are remaining. It's not going to be wholly dependent on that. I think that can add to some high growth, but improvement in base growth will come without those large deals based on a number of other momentum deals in the market. In terms of overall impact, like I said, all we are in a good position to say right now is that we're better than 2025. And there's a lot of percentages in the current quarter that will help us provide color on how much. So this range that we're asking for, I think, is a quarter away for us.
Understood. Understood, Keech.
Customers on budgets and deal closures more large in this quarter.
Understood. And as a follow-up to that, are you seeing some short-sighted deals coming back? Are you seeing decision-making sort of improve a little bit overall, which means or which would kind of confirm our thesis that those large deals might add less and less variance to our business because the short-cycle deals will pick up? Are you seeing evidence of that?
Definitely, yes. So I already said, I think the growth kind of for next year, the two large consolidation deals that are there in the pipeline is going to really add to growth. Our kind of base growth thesis is not based on those deals. So there's quite a number of quite decent-sized momentum deals that are back on the table for closure.
Got it. Thank you so much. All the best.
As a reminder, to enter the queue, you may click the raise hand button at the bottom of your Zoom interface. Our next question will come from Abhishek Kumar with JM Financial.
Yeah. Hi. Good morning. I have a couple of questions. First, on Q4 outlook, last quarter or the quarter before that, we had indicated that this year you might buck the trend of decline in Q4. It seems like there are new headwinds now. Plus, there is a higher base of Q3 because of license, which may not repeat next quarter. So fair to assume that we are looking at maybe slightly more accentuated seasonality in Q4 this year compared to previous years?
Actually, I want to clarify the past first. We did say that in Q, you know, at the end of Q1, but at the end of Q2, the last call we had, we clarified that the deals haven't closed. They've shifted right by quarter to two. And at this point, no matter what deals we close, we don't see an impact of it for Q3 and Q4. So I do want to clarify that we did not say last time that we will grow in Q4. So just on kind of the license stuff, while there's a little bit spike in Q3, actually our multi-quarter average is very much in line with history. Three-quarter average for this year is in line with history. So not necessarily like a spike in average. There was a spike in just in Q3. Yeah. There are seasonal headwinds.
We called out the one additional headwind that nobody could have foreseen. It's been there now for 36, 37 days to shut down. It'll be a flattish quarter. We won't get growth, but it'll be a flattish quarter.
So second question is on visa transfers. Just want to understand what kind of visa transfers are we talking about given that we didn't apply for any H-1B this year? So any clarity? And this is related to the government-sponsored entity business that was ramping up, or is it related to business as usual?
So what the visa transfer means is when we are growing, we hire somebody in the US, and if they're working for somewhere else, okay, some other organization, they're on H-1B for that organization, we have to transfer that person's H-1B from the current organization to us. That process is stopped for 36 days now. Okay. So that's what we mean. This is true for every customer. It's not just for the GCCs. Okay. Everywhere where there's growth, in onsite, now, quite a bit of that is in the two organizations you referred to. But it's not unique to the business in those two customers. It is anyone anywhere needs to grow onsite. A part of that growth, the pool of talent is coming from prior H-1Bs. That pool of talent is not actionable right now.
Okay. One very last question. You indicated significant budget cut in one of your professional services clients where we had won a deal. Just want to understand why was there a budget cut? Is it because of DOGE, because they are exposed to government procurement, or just weakness in their own business?
It's not DOGE. Actually, this particular one is not kind of in the big list for Fed. They have obviously some exposure there. We don't know how much, but it's not in that as a consequence of DOGE. This is as a consequence of their business. And I'll also say in this case, it is actually as a consequence of AI in their business. To some extent, it is that. Not necessarily immediately, but what they anticipate will happen.
Okay. Sure. That's helpful and all the best.
We'll take a question that was submitted in writing. If you could help us with the timing and quantum of wage hikes, and how do they compare with possibly what you've been given in the more recent past?
We provided wage hikes from October 1st. It was modest compared to prior cycles, but it's much better than the industry, and our employees appreciate that.
As another reminder for our audience to enter the queue, you may click the raise hand button at the bottom of your Zoom interface. We'll take another written question. Is pricing deflation already visible in renewals or new deals?
So every kind of deal has an impact of AI-based on a go-forward basis. So outsourcing, there's more productivity than before in SDLC. So I referred to it briefly. I think there is solid acceptance of AI in every phase of the SDLC. So for us, kind of what it means is that if you're dealing with a legacy or a brownfield situation, RapidX uncovers the past and delivers a blueprint as to what to build. And once you have what to build, then it is a variety of kind of coding tools that help customers reduce the build cost. In addition, we've introduced this new service called Vibe Coding that has significant impact on cost and time in the early cycle of greenfield development. So there is an impact on how much kind of effort it will take to deliver this.
On the other hand, part of the thesis has consistently been that it will get more than made up for by increased volumes, and legacy modernization is a great example. It's a volume that didn't exist before. It is possible now because of AI.
For our next question, we'll return to Pratik Maheshwari with HSBC Securities.
Hello. Thank you for the follow-up. I just wanted to, could you remind us on your margin expansion? So I think the ERP-related savings are still yet to come, right? So just wanted to understand what's the plan for that? And the second thing, could you also add what could be the furlough impact that you guys may face next quarter?
Just on long-term margins, you're right that the ERP savings haven't come in yet. It's not gone fully live, but at this point, especially in the current economy, the focus is all on growth, so we're not kind of, it's not our first stop to put savings from ERP into margins, but we use it to invest to grow better. Okay. Furlough calendar together will have 2.5%-3% headwind Q4. Vikash?
Yeah. So you were addressed, right? But in terms of the percentages, Pratik, from a current quarter perspective, just to reiterate what I mentioned from a 30 basis points improvement on a quarter-on-quarter, 40 basis points was from operational items, primarily the utilization improvement what we had, and the mix improvement by close to 220 basis points. FX was 110 basis points of a tailwind. Higher license cost was a headwind of 70 basis points. And I spoke about two items respect to the current quarter, which was travel and an increase in medical expenses in the US, which was a headwind of 50 basis points. So these were the percentages.
Got it. Just one more question if I can add. So I was just looking at your top 10 accounts growth, right? So just wanted to understand the next 10. That growth has been weak there. So just wanted to understand how that bracket is building up. Are there any comments to share?
Vikash? So I think the kind of the second customer in professional services is in that 10 to 20 bucket, which had a significant headwind Q3 to Q4 and then the bottom. That was in the 10 to 20 bucket. It was actually in the top 10 that slid to 10 to 20.
Got it. Got it. Thank you, Keech. Thank you so much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I will now hand the conference over to management for closing comments. Over to you.
Oh, thank you. Look forward to seeing you all a quarter from now. Thank you, sir.